


The Gash

by MeltyRum



Category: Fate/Zero, Loveless, Persona 5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeltyRum/pseuds/MeltyRum
Summary: Just high school things.
Kudos: 2
Collections: Boku no Hero Academia x Persona





	The Gash

He had gone to school today, just like he was told to. He even pretended to express interest in student council, although he and everyone else knew that he wasn’t the right material for it. It was important to make people think he still had a reason to be here; to think he still had a normal life to spend, when in reality his life was no longer his—a thought that was beginning to bring him less comfort than it once did, since maintaining appearances was such an exhausting task.

It was for the best, though, he reminded himself. For Seimei.

Kariya tried to find some kind of amusement in the fact that he was clearly not the only one putting on an act. He could still remember the ridiculous smile that Iwai-san had given him in that stuffy student council room. It must have taken him a considerable amount of effort to wear such a friendly face around Kariya, as it was a task that none of his fellow council members seemed up to even attempting. Instead, they all averted their eyes—as everyone else did—doing their best to speak to him without actually speaking _to_ him, their voices conversing more with the air beside them than with him, their words intended only as deflections and excuses, nearly begging him not to ever show himself around them again as they suggested—to the room at large—that the student council was not in need of any help; not at the moment, anyway.

And he tried to be graceful in this rejection, providing them an embarrassed and self-deprecating smile and a nod of understanding like any other reject might do, just before he took his leave.

Yes… every day he acted like a good student, or at least like any other high school boy who had ever undergone some petty schoolyard bullying. He needed an excuse, after all—things to point at in case anyone ever ended up suspecting the nature of his real mission. Of course, the very notion of being suspected was ridiculous, because everyone went out of their way to make sure they never noticed Kariya, except to give him a wide berth in the hallways. And there was no chance anyone might guess that he only attended school in order to _spy_.

But… the target himself might figure it out one day, he had to admit. Ritsuka had sharp ears and probably sharper eyes, so Kariya wouldn’t be able to get away with following him wherever he wished. He couldn’t just tail him to Junes every day, or to soccer practice (another club he’d been ungracefully rejected from), or to the bike racks, so he was required to keep his eyes on him as often as he could while school was in session. And if Kariya had to be everywhere in order to be wherever Ritsuka was, then he needed alibis for being in any given place. And for the places where he could not follow, his insects—his enemies and his friends—most certainly could, often without notice.

A bit extreme? Certainly. Undoubtedly. But the mysterious fellow to whom Kariya had offered his services was the cautious type… and Kariya could feel it rubbing off. And considering how smart Beloved seemed, it only made sense that his younger brother may benefit from the same genetic privilege. Yes—at a distance—Ritsuka-kun wasn’t so different from his brother: pleasant features all around, smart, personable (sometimes), and lucky enough to be born with a quirk that would do nothing but delight the people around him.

If he wasn’t Seimei’s brother… Kariya would probably hate him. Quirks like that—that only increased one’s charm—were the kinds he hated most; he would suggest that they made his skin crawl, but his own quirk did that quite enough already. Naturally, he could tell that this was just envy and resentment for the fact that he had not been lucky enough to be born with something similar; he hadn’t even been lucky enough to be born with something that would make him a _zero_ , something that might make him _bearable_ to speak with, rather than something that inspired only uneasy smiles and uncertain gazes at the best of times and disgust and fear and hatred at the worst of them.

Though he could still find no pleasure in it, this bubble of disgust that he had earned (with no more than an unlucky quirk) had proved to be useful for him now. He sat in the back of his class, of course, toward the window; this manufactured the best situation for his classmates, as it meant that only three people at any given time needed to be anywhere near him. Likewise, if a student for any reason needed to take his leave of the classroom, they would not need to pass near a classmate who sat as host to maggots and fleas and ticks and spiders and worse.

It didn’t even matter if he could conceal it. Beneath the skin was still too close for them. Because—even with the best control that Kariya could muster—there would still be one or two that would slough away from his skin during any given day, perhaps leaving a beetle or a worm squirming by its lonesome in one of the hallways. Even if it was not one of Kariya’s—even if it was one of any of the thousands of other insects for which he took no responsibility—any stray hint of spindly little leg or filmy wing or chitinous husk or gastropod mucous could be used as evidence for heaping blame upon him; Matou’s lack of control, they might say, is what attracts these undesirable creatures here, making our beloved school building resemble a haunted house more than a place of learning.

Naturally, this was exaggeration: most of these insects had nothing to do with Kariya; they would be present no matter which institution he had attended. But he was a very convenient target, wasn’t he? For teachers and students both.

Sometimes, however, those bugs _were_ his. And sometimes he could feel their final moments, abandoned and alone somewhere in the school building somewhere where he had once tread, being finished off by a disgusted student or an exhausted custodian.

It hurt every time—only a little, like a twinge or a pinch or sometimes a headache that lasted only for a second—when his bond with one of the insects was severed, cruelly and nervously crushed by someone’s notebook or dustpan. As much as he hated it, Kariya could hardly blame them: sometimes _he_ crushed them, too. Not to feel the pain, necessarily (although sometimes he did, indeed, want a taste of it), but because he shared the revulsion that they felt toward these terrifying little creatures inside him. He hated them almost as much as he hated the occasional moment of fondness he felt for the insects, since that fondness was a feeling that he knew would truly and finally separate him from everyone else, should he allow himself to cling to that feeling.

Kariya did his best to refuse it, though. There was nothing redeemable about the digging limbs of the tick, the gleaming armor of a millipede, or the rapid and machine-like precision with which a spider’s legs carried it. Nothing to admire in the fluttering wings of a moth, the dangerous banded warning printed onto the tail of the hornet, or in the sharp and firm horn of a beetle. These were things that no one wanted anywhere near them, and Kariya could not claim to be different from them, even if he had gotten used to it no longer being a question of “nearness”.

There was no longer distance between him and the insects. He and they were the same.

And so he felt their pain—could physically and sympathetically sense their senses, could feel every second it took for a roach to be crushed to death.

But those deaths were not all. Insects died all the time, after all, short lived as they were. If one of his bugs passed on, this was very often followed by a feeling of mild excitement or even ecstasy—like when you feel your stomach rise inside your body on the elevator going down—or like that feeling one receives when you know that, _today,_ you will be receiving a long-awaited package—these are the sensations that rippled through Kariya’s body as new births began to populate his body, his arthropod progeny squirming within him as eggs became maggots became cocoons became things with thin limbs, translucent wings, serrated fangs.

The truth was that a fair number of them died in service to his mission, occasionally finding themselves intercepted as they went to carry out his designs. If Kariya sent something small and creepy to spy inside Ritsuka’s classroom, there was always the chance they would be spotted and dealt with before they ever arrived—or perhaps Kariya’s control would fail, given a certain distance: the minds of insects were very simple and mechanical, which sometimes meant that they could be very easily distracted. If one of his spiders spied some small insect prey of its own, it might go its own way, electing to construct a web for feeding rather than heed a task which seemed not to take its survivability in mind.

But when everything went well—when he could command a bug to securely creep its way into the classroom of his target—Kariya could truly become a fly on the wall, with some limitations. The bond (if it could be called that) which he shared with his spawn only allowed him to interpret the situations the way they did, although his frankly superior humanoid brain could make much more sense of those interpretations than a house fly could. They—these insects—may not be able to understand Japanese, but he could. They may not know what Ritsuka looked like, but he did. They could not find his location on their own, but he could guide them to it. As long as he could focus and as long as his emissaries reached their goal safely, he could keep an eye—or eight—on Ritsuka Aoyagi.

Of course, only so many of Kariya’s observations could be deemed useful. There was not much to share with Seimei that he did not already know: Ritsuka was doing relatively well in his classes, getting along with a fair number of his classmates and, indeed, getting along _very_ well with one senpai in particular. Yet Seimei seemed to crave these details, no matter how mundane or how many times Kariya might have expressed them before. If any part of the situation did or did not change, it was important for him to make certain that Beloved was apprised of it.

But his tasks for this particular day were just about complete after his rejection by the student council; it was time for Kariya to gather his bag, leave his shoes at the lockers, and make his way for the gate. He could record his observations once he arrived home, where it was even easier for him to lock himself away and be by his lonesome, because—if Kariya’s condition were not enough—leading the well-worn path of the sullen teenager meant that his parents would not find engaging with him to be some trivial feat.

It was late enough that most students had already left or had gotten themselves stuck into their club activities, so the walk to the gate was a lonesome one. As he neared the entrance, however, Kariya heard some rapid footsteps from behind him, which he nonchalantly ignored whilst also hoping those footsteps would be carrying the knife in the back which he had always wanted.

“Matou-san!”

No such luck, it seemed.

Kariya turned, seeing nothing in the school’s entrance courtyard save for a face which was very familiar indeed, since he had just seen it in the student council room. The pursuer’s face was a mixture of embarrassment and—could it be?—sympathy.

“Iwai-san.” Kariya forced himself to smile, although he was suspicious to be meeting this guy again so soon. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had greeted him on the back of losing a bet. “Did I leave something behind in the student council room?”

Iwai shook his head. “No, I just—I’m sorry, Matou-san. The truth is that there’s plenty of room on the student council, but they—our senpai—they…” he trailed off, apparently realizing how it embarrassing it was for him to be making excuses for someone else. “I apologize for their refusing you, Matou-san. I don’t think it’s fair for them to reject you because of your… reputation,” he said carefully, his mouth only very nearly having begun to form the word for ‘quirk’.

Kariya could not tell if Iwai was serious, but it didn’t really matter. It was too late for this piteous nonsense—for words as pretty and thin and insubstantial as a silverfish. Whatever it was that Iwai-san hoped to gain from speaking to him—in jest or in earnest—Kariya was not prepared to give it to him. People could not control what did or did not disgust them, and that was a fact. Even now, Iwai-san was clearly experiencing horrible difficulty in raising his gaze to meet Kariya’s eyes—or to look anywhere near his face, for that matter. Perhaps something crawled and pulsed threateningly just beneath the skin of his cheeks, even now.

“No need to worry, Iwai-san,” said Kariya, dropping the friendly pretense he had adopted for his duties. “They can’t be blamed. They knew what they were doing when they refused me—there’s no way someone like me could be representative of the student body.”

“That’s not true! Anyone could be a member of the council.”

“If they accepted them, I suppose. But I imagine they’re not reconsidering what they told me.”

“Well, no,” he admitted. The guilt on his face betrayed nearly the whole truth.

“Then don’t apologize for them; I’m sure they were all relieved when I had gone, probably making a few jokes at my expense once they could be certain I had gone back from whence I came. That’s not behavior that the faculty can correct, is it.” Kariya chuckled. He could almost hear the ridicule. No doubt they would spread today’s feeble application among their friends, and before he knew it there would be entire cliques guffawing about the very idea of the insectoid creep himself trying to crawl his way into the student council.

Kariya turned to leave.

Iwai had apparently not given up, though: “Everyone has something like that which makes them unique, though. Well—almost everyone!” insisted Iwai. “So if you being unique is wrong, it means _no one_ would be a good representative. But we both know that’s not true, so… I just wanted to apologize to you. I’ll talk to them. It’s not fair to punish you because of—”

“A quirk? Not everyone who gets a quirk is lucky, Iwai-san,” he replied dryly, frowning at Iwai’s simpering, sycophantic little face. “Don’t talk to them about me. What’s more, I’m not interested in your pity; I can’t tell if you’re trying to trick me, but if you aren’t, then overtures of politeness won’t get you anywhere with me; it’s not like you’re the first to regret trying.”

“We… I know you don’t talk to a lot of people, Matou-san,” said Iwai uneasily, clearly trying to measure his tone so that it came out as gentle and placating as possible. “It’s not as easy as asking you to be friends—I get that—but maybe we can try!”

Kariya stared in silence for a moment, wondering how hecould say things like that without any shame or embarrassment. Despite himself, Kariya felt that Iwai might even be sincere; if this was an offer he had gotten before meeting Seimei, then he probably would have been moved into an embarrassing bout of tears. But now… this display of friendship—of making amends for the sins of others—looked to Kariya like nothing but a shameful and pitiful show of weakness, of polite society weakly attempting to pull him back into its fold.

But… it had rejected him too many times. It was impossible now.

Eventually, he laughed. “People don’t befriend people like me, Iwai-san. I’ll show you.” With a smile, he raised a hand up close to Iwai’s face—not to strike him or to push him, but to make him see that what lingered inside Kariya Matou was nothing human—nothing worthy of the title of “friend”.

With his palm lingering in front of Iwai’s startled face, Kariya felt a gash spread itself open in the center. What spilled forth was not blood, but much worse. A centipede the width of a human finger (and the length of several more) came wriggling out of the new egress in his hand, its tiny legs carrying it out and away from the hollow in his palm, allowing itself to twist around one or two of his fingers. This unpleasant visitor was followed by more: small swarms of creeping, crawling creatures in various sizes skittered out of his hand, in short order covering his entire hand with ants, spiders, ticks, mites, every digit pulsing and writhing with the lives of dozens of minuscule creatures.

Some of them crept up his arm, disappearing into the sleeves of his uniform, where they crawled where they pleased, sometimes creating new openings through which they might re-enter his body, or some adventurous few even crawling up to his face where they took their shelter via his ear, nose, mouth, or eye, disappearing into his flesh and causing it to squirm wherever they did so.

Kariya wished he could claim the process was painful; if it were, perhaps Iwai-san would be right: perhaps there would be no need to be ashamed of his quirk. Perhaps he, like anyone else, could be a member of the student council. But while the sensation of hundreds of filthy little things exiting and re-entering his body was not necessarily comfortable, there was no pain of which he could speak. He was not… _normal_. He was used to it. If ever there had been an example of humanity’s quirks breeding a creature that was closer to monster than human, then Kariya was that entity—that unfortunate accident of life that all of humanity would be better without.

And as used to the feeling as Kariya was, the reverse was true for Iwai. The boy jumped back at the sight, stumbling and falling onto his rump as he looked up at Kariya’s slithering hand with the sort of visceral fear that could only be inspired by insects of this nature. Some of the clumsier bugs even fell from their home, landing with uncomfortable meaty little sounds as they fell to the earth—a sight which prompted Iwai to scramble backwards on his hands, even though the insects (once they had regained their composure) returned harmlessly to Kariya, inviting themselves back home by slinking up and into his uniform.

Kariya was surprised that seeing the look on Kaoru’s face felt… a little good. But he was a creep, after all; maybe watching someone’s face curl from disgust into horror was a satisfaction that suited someone like him.

“Did you see, Iwai-san?” He lowered his hand, feeling the crawling creatures within it begin patching up the cleft which he had created, knitting his flesh together with silk and slime and all other manner of insectoid mechanisms that might enhance the unnatural healing of his equally unnatural body. “I’m sure I needn’t say any more.”

He watched Kaoru swallow hard. “They’re… they’re just bugs! Those are everywhere, Matou-san,” he said, shakily getting back to his feet. “Although that probably doesn’t sound so tough from the ground; I’m just not used to them yet—that’s all,” he added, with some self-deprecating laughter.

Kariya stared, uncertain if he should be impressed. Maybe Iwai-san was some sort of idiot. While not exactly intended as a _threat_ , he thought that this display made it rather clear that any offers of friendship or apology were unwelcome. He glanced around the courtyard, making sure that they were still the only two people here; it would be better if no one else had seen it, since Kaoru spreading rumors about their encounter would be just as reliable as anything else people said about him.

“Everyone needs people they can count on every once in a while, Matou-san,” said Iwai, patting the dust from his back. “I know I’m not the most reliable person—and I can’t claim to understand what it’s like in your shoes—but I don’t mind being friendly, even if we can’t be friends.”

The offers of peace only grew more suspicious, but it was actually hard not to feel a little sorry for Iwai-san. If this was how he acted in the face of such mean-spirited displays, it wouldn’t be long before this guy was being taken advantage of by those with even less-charitable dispositions than Kariya.

Taken advantage of, huh…

Now that Kariya took the time to consider it, Iwai-san _was_ friendly with Aoyagi-san, wasn’t he? While he couldn’t be sure that Seimei would approve, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to try and use this as a passage into Ritsuka’s little circle of acquaintances, even if it was very difficult for Kariya to imagine the pristine and confident Aoyagi-san deigning to extend friendship to an infested hive like himself.

But Iwai-san had opened that door. It would be stupid not to peek behind it.

“Fine,” Kariya sighed. “I guess you win. I… appreciate it.” He reached out his hand again—the same with which he had just performed his little demonstration—offering it in friendship. Perhaps this would be the last little test; Seimei was able to grasp Kariya’s hand—could Iwai do the same? “Let’s try to get along, Iwai-san,” he added, smiling thinly.

There was hesitation there, but Iwai surprised Kariya by taking his hand firmly. It was tempting to let loose a critter or two from beneath his fingernails and have them skitter up his new “friend’s” arm, but Kariya decided to be merciful this time—it was for Seimei’s sake, after all. If it was in his benefactor’s best interests that Kariya make friends and close the distance to Ritsuka-kun, then no one could blame him for entertaining an offer of friendship, could he?

Because this wasn’t for himself, you see. There was nothing pathetic about accepting Iwai’s hand, covered as it was in pity and shameless sympathy.

“And I’ve got plenty of other friends, too!” said Kaoru. “They’re good people, and if they get to understand you, I’m sure you can find at least one comrade among them.”

Kariya smiled; that settled things, then. “I won’t get my hopes up, but I hope you are right, Iwai-san. I can’t wait to meet them.”


End file.
